Saturday, March 1, 2014

Mordechai Kedar: Hizb’Allah is Getting Ready for the Big Bang



By Mordechai Kedar
 
 Read the article in Italiano (translated by Yehudit Weisz, edited by Angelo Pezzana)

There are two main reasons for the smuggling of strategic weapons to Lebanon: One relates to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and the other relates to al-Qaeda and the Salafi jihadist organizations, both of which are parts of the “big bang” that Hizb’Allah is preparing for.


According to sources abroad, Israel attacked Hizb’Allah targets again this week, in the area of the border between Syria and Lebanon. It is widely surmised that the target of the attack was a convoy of heavy vehicles carrying Scud missiles from Syria to Lebanon. These are long range, accurate missiles with the ability to carry a large warhead.

This action is the implementation of Israel’s public declaration repeated time and again, that she will not allow the Lebanese terror organization to get its hands on weapons of mass destruction or strategic weapons that would change the balance of power, meaning missiles that are over a specific weight, range or accuracy.

Hizb’Allah spokesmen claim that the attack was in the area of Syria. This may be true, but then again it may not, because if the attack was outside of Lebanon Hizb’Allah would be less obligated to respond. The organization – which represents itself as defending Lebanon from Zionist attacks – would have had to respond if it was admitted that the attack was inside Lebanon.

Hizb’Allah has another reason to say that the attack was inside of Syria: This might provoke the Syrian army to respond to Israel, contrary to previous incidences when Bashar Asad restrained himself issuing the empty statement that “Syria will respond in the suitable time and place”. However, the Syrian army is engaged at the moment with an existential war, and has no desire or intention to enter into a conflict with Israel during this historic, fateful phase.

It is interesting that one of the Hizb’Allah spokesmen also said things of this sort, and his words add to the fact that Hizb’Allah kept a low profile this week as it marked the anniversary of the death of Imad Murghniye. Hizb’Allah did not hold large events as they have in the past, fearing that there might be attacks against the participants.

The Purpose for Smuggling the Weapons

There are two main reasons for the smuggling of strategic weapons to Lebanon: One relates to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and the other relates to al-Qaeda and the Salafi jihadist organizations, both of which are parts of the “big bang” that Hizb’Allah is preparing for.

From the point of view of Iran, which runs Hizb’Allah, the big bang will happen when the Israeli-Saudi coalition decides to act alone against Iran, when the regime of sanctions has collapsed and Iran feels free to run ahead with its military nuclear project. As Iran sees it, Israel and Saudi Arabia already feel that the United States and Europe have betrayed them, so they feel free to prepare an attack on Iran.

One tool that Iran has at its disposal to deter Israel and Saudi Arabia, and to act against them if needed, is to give long-range missiles to Hizb’Allah to use against Saudi Arabia and Israel, in that order. In the last three years it has become clear to Iran in the Syrian killing field that Teheran’s greatest and most dangerous enemy is not Israel, but Saudi Arabia. This is the reason that Hizb’Allah needs new, longer range missiles than the tens of thousands of missiles that it has today. The purpose of the Israeli attack this week on these missiles was to protect Saudi Arabia as well as Israel.

The second reason for transferring missiles from Syria to Lebanon is – if the Asad regime falls - to prevent them from falling into the hands of Sunni Salafi jihad organizations of the al-Qaeda, Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra sort. These organizations might make use of the long range missiles – if they get their hands on them – against Hizb’Allah in Lebanon and against its allies in Iraq and perhaps even in Iran, so in order to protect these allies Hizb’Allah is trying to transfer these long range missiles into the territory of Lebanon.

It is important to note here that there are great quantities of chemical weapons still inside Syria, and it may be that Hizb’Allah is trying to transfer them into Lebanon as well, for all of the reasons mentioned above. The world should assume that Israel has not succeeded in hermetically preventing the leaks of these strategic weapons – large, long range, accurate missiles and chemical weapons – into Lebanon, and as of today Hizb’Allah has some of these weapons, ready for use at any moment.

Anyone who visits the Golan Heights these days near the armistice line in the area of Quneitra can hear the echoes of war from Syrian territory. Mortars, cannon, tanks, RPGs and perhaps even anti-tank missiles explode continuously within earshot, and some even fall inside the Golan. This music is the swan song of the bloodthirsty regime that is slaughtering its own citizens, whose fate is sealed and now is acting according to the logic of “Let me die with the Philistines” (Judges 16:30).

Saudi Arabia contributes its part to fanning the flame by sending shoulder launched Chinese anti-aircraft missiles to the jihadists, so that they will be able to deal more effectively with Asad’s helicopters and the terrible barrel bombs that are dropped from them on the jihadists and the citizens of Syria. Russia is extremely concerned, but the Ukrainian headache bothers Putin more.

Because of the difficulties that the regime in Turkey is experiencing these days, Jordan has become the main base of operations against the regime in Syria. It is not unreasonable to expect a Syrian attack on Jordan, and it could be that the method of choice will be a Hizb’Allah style attack against a symbol of government, in Jordanian territory or outside of it such as the embassy or an aircraft.

The leaders of Hizb’Allah and Iran read the Syrian map well and are preparing themselves for the next phase of the battle, the big bang, when regional war breaks out between the Israeli-Saudi-Jordanian-Qatari coalition and Iran and its satellites. The purpose of the Israeli bombing this week was to improve the coalition’s position in this scenario.

But behind Hizb’Allah’s back, inside of Lebanon, a big problem is developing in the shape of the Lebanese Salafi jihadist organizations who are preparing to duplicate inside of Lebanon a copy of the war now being waged in Syria. Even the names of the organizations are identical to those that are tearing Syria to pieces. The day that the fighting ends in Syria – whether with Asad’s victory or defeat – they will begin the fighting inside of Lebanon, either to take revenge on Hizb’Allah for the defeat that they experienced in Syria or to exploit the victory they achieved over Asad, Nasrallah and Khamenei.

 A Few Words about Terror

Terror is dangerous because it is asymmetrical warfare between two sides: on one hand a state and society that acts according to national and international law, rules honoring human rights, rights of minorities and women, trying to differentiate between a fighter and an innocent citizen and attack only the fighter, even if he hides behind an innocent child. The language that a state uses when involved in the fight against terror is limited as well, by rules of political correctness.

On the other side is a person who acts according to no rules: he wears no uniform, he does not recognize international law, has no regard for international conventions, and human rights are have no value for him. He does not constrain himself by any rule, and does not consider the rights of minorities, women or children. His remarks are not constrained by the rules of political correctness, and he calls his opponents the harshest of names in order to justify the harm he causes them.

This is the profound reason that modern states and societies today find it difficult to cope with terror, since it doesn’t operate according to the principles of these states and societies. And here is where terror has a great advantage in its unrestrained struggle against Western societies – which do constrain themselves in their war against it.

The situation of the terrorist becomes problematic when his enemy is a terrorist like him, because in this case the enemy does not constrain himself or his fighting by any principle or law, and he feels free to act as a terrorist against the first terrorist. In this situation both terrorists lose the relative advantage, therefore the war between them is extremely bloody.

This is the situation today between Hizb’Allah and its Sunni enemies, the Salafi jihadists: both sides behave as terrorists, without constraints and without bounds, with no law and no judge, and the Almighty One – Whose word and ideas both sides claim to represent – does not intervene in the bloody conflict.

There are several jihadist organizations in Syria that are in this situation: al-Qaeda fights with “The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS), and Jabhat al-Nusra threatens ISIS with open warfare as a result of the assassination of one of its leaders in Syria, Abu Khaled al-Suri, a week ago in Aleppo.

It may be that this is also the tragedy of radical Islam: each time a radical group manages to take over some territory and establish a base for operation, a more radical group emerges to fight with the first group, using terrorists’ methods, of course. And after the second one wins, an even more radical group will come and do to it what it did to its predecessor, over and over again.  

This is the result of the Saudi operations in Syria, so is it any wonder that Obama has decided to abandon the Saudi family and throw it under the Iranian bus?

The Syrian Conflict Spills Over into Israel

In Israel and the Golan a heated argument is being conducted on the question of whether to support Bashar Asad or call for his downfall. Some jihadists have already crossed from Israel into Syria to take part in the Syrian mission to overthrow Bashar, and some are already in the paradise reserved for martyrs.

The public dispute in Israel between the supporters of Bashar and those who oppose him is also expressed in graffiti on the walls. The building of the Syrian headquarters near Quneitra, which is today within Israeli territory, is an open place where visitors can come at any time. Shown here is the writing on one of the walls. The translation of the part written in black ink is: “I am Syrian and my country is Arab, my people is a champion of freedom. May Bashar fall”. Someone else, armed with read spray paint, added the word “never”, meaning “Bashar will never fall”.



 

Hamas: Teaching Human Rights is Against Palestinian, Islamic Culture



by Khaled Abu Toameh

Hamas' real problem with the UNRWA curriculum is that it could spoil the Islamist movement's ongoing efforts to stir the hearts and minds of Palestinian children to wage jihad against the "enemies" of Islam. Hamas wants Palestinian children to be taught how to become suicide bombers and seek the death of Jews and "infidels."

Palestinian schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip have been denied the opportunity to learn about human rights after the Hamas government determined that such a subject "dangerously contravenes Palestinian and Islamic culture."

Hamas's announcement came in response to an attempt by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to include a course on human rights in schools run by the agency in the Gaza Strip.

The UNRWA bid drew strong condemnations from the Hamas government, whose representatives accused the international agency of seeking to "brainwash" Palestinian children.

Mutasame al-Minawi, a senior official with the Hamas-run Ministry of Education, explained that the main reason why his government was opposed to the human rights subject being taught in Palestinian schools is because it "ignores the nakba [catastrophe] of the Palestinian people, seeks to scrap the right of return for Palestinian refugees [to Israel] and promotes the culture of peaceful resistance and submission as a way of restoring our rights."

Al-Minawi said that UNRWA proposed two years ago to include in its school curriculum the subject of human rights. UNRWA was hoping, he added, that the subject would be taught to children from Grades 7-9.

According to the Hamas official, his government back then expressed reservations about some of the contents of the subject, prompting UNRWA to amend about 40% of the material.

But recently, UNRWA decided to go ahead with its plan to teach human rights in its schools in the Gaza Strip, ignoring warnings from the Hamas government, al-Minawi claimed. "UNRWA is acting as a state-within-a-state," he charged. "They need to know the limits of their power and that they are committed to the curriculum taught in areas under UNRWA's jurisdiction."

The Hamas official said that UNRWA's human rights course was aimed at making Palestinian children develop "negative sentiments towards the armed resistance although it is legitimate for a people under occupation."

What is also worrying Hamas is that UNRWA is seeking to teach Palestinian children about the disastrous repercussions of wars and violence by depicting a child burning a military uniform. "This does not serve the cause of human rights," the Hamas official said. "They want to raise children on calmness."

The Hamas protests forced UNRWA to suspend its plan to teach the subject of human rights in its schools. Some Palestinians criticized UNRWA for "succumbing" to threats, while others said they were aware that the international agency had no choice but to comply.

In an attempt to calm Hamas, UNRWA denied that its school curriculum contravened Palestinian tradition and culture.

A spokesman for UNRWA said that his agency consults with "all components of Palestinian society" about its human rights courses.

Hamas's real problem with the UNRWA curriculum is that it could spoil the Islamist movement's ongoing efforts to stir the hearts and minds of Palestinian children to wage jihad against the "enemies" of Islam.

Hamas wants Palestinian children to be taught how to become suicide bombers and seek the death of Jews and "infidels."

Hamas does not want Palestinian children to learn about civil rights heroes such as Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. These people were opposed to violence and therefore their ideology, according to Hamas, is in violation of Palestinian and Islamic culture.

Hamas wants Palestinian children to glorify suicide bombers and terrorists who mercilessly kill innocent people, including many Muslims, on a daily basis. Hamas's summer camps are all about training children in the use of weapons and injecting them with more hatred towards Israel and the US.


Palestinian children at a Hamas summer camp in June 2013. (Image source: IDF YouTube video)


"Hamas is behaving in the Gaza Strip as if it were an independent state," wrote Palestinian columnist Hassan Khader.

Khader also criticized the Palestinian public and political factions for failing to pay enough attention to the controversy between Hamas and UNRWA over the school curriculum.

For now, Hamas appears to have succeeded in preventing UNRWA from teaching Palestinian children about human rights. The two parties are now negotiating an end to the crisis, which does not seem likely unless UNRWA officially joins Hamas's ideology and starts preaching for jihad and anti-semitism.


Khaled Abu Toameh

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4192/human-rights-palestinian-islamic-culture

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Punching Bag Bigots of Anti-Israel Boycotts



by Vijeta Uniyal


BDS_bigot
Reprinted from TheCommentator.com.

The Italian philosopher and politician Niccolò Machiavelli famously said: “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception”. After decades of aggression failed to destroy Israel, deception is the “new” game in town.

This deception has a name, or to be precise, a lame sounding acronym — BDS, the campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

The BDS campaign has two main ingredients — one is deception and the other is another kind of lie. There’s the sinister deception about the campaign’s own true nature, and a blatant lie about the state of Israel.

The otherwise vocal BDS campaign remains eerily silent about its ties and sympathies with terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The campaign lures in faith-based Christian groups, and LBGT community and feminist groups while at the same time hiding its ties with the homophobic and misogynist clerical regime of Iran.

Yes, indeed. The BDS campaign calls for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel, while doing the bidding of its masters in Tehran who offer bounties on the heads of writers abroad and hang poets for penning dissenting verses at home.

The BDS campaign targets and maligns Israel, the only functioning democracy and liberal-minded multi-ethnic society in the Middle East — a country that doesn’t discriminate negatively against its citizens on the basis of gender, sexual orientation or faith; and where every citizen has access to an impartial judiciary for redressing grievances regardless of faith or ethnicity.

The terrible beauty of the BDS campaign is that it does not have to bind itself to facts. This fact-free campaign is all about emotions. The campaign scouts interest groups, communities and campuses for “grievances”. Their game plan is to whip up emotions, ratchet up the hate, and present the mob with a target, namely Israel.

The fact that their issues and grievances have nothing to do with Israel doesn’t really bother BDS campaigners.

There is something for everyone. An all-inclusive package to fight “evil corporations”, “apartheid”, “racism”, “militarism”, “gender oppression” — or any other perceived discriminations. On university campuses all across Europe and North America, the BDS’s message is simple: “If you have a grievance worth getting mad about, we have just the right punching bag for you.”
The BDS campaign camouflages itself as the reincarnation of the Résistance, the Civil-Rights Movement or the Gandhian Civil-Disobedience movement in our times. The fact that it has nothing to do with the reality of Israel isn’t allowed to dampen the mood at this anti-Israel slugfest.

On the other hand, those in the western liberal academia and self-proclaimed “civil society” also have no big qualms about hopping on a bandwagon driven by Hamas or Hezbollah.

The question worth asking would be; what drives elements like Hamas and Hezbollah to hate Israel. It is not about the “settlements”, the “refugees” and the “occupation”. It is about the very existence of Israel; the existence of a free, humane and enlightened society in a neighborhood of bigotry, despotism and tyranny.

The contempt and hatred of Israel is in fact contempt and hatred of Western Democracy and Civilization. The radical Left in the West hates the values signified by Israel just as much as the religious supremacists in the Arab world do. It is a match made in hell in which the BDS campaign plays cupid bringing these sadists and masochists together to form an unholy alliance.

It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so tragic. The BDS campaign uses the avenues and free spaces provided by the liberal and open societies to hit at the very core of values that built them in the first place. It uses University campuses, faculty unions and student bodies to divide and polarize. It targets trade unions, local communities and churches to spread the mean-spirited gospel of BDS.

The BDS campaign will never achieve its intended goal of “bringing Israel to its knees”. However, it is bound to have unintended consequences.

The practitioners of BDS are bent upon disrupting the free flow of knowledge, academic discourse and civilizational advancement in the Western World. They must not be allowed to do so, for we are all in peril if they are.


Vijeta Uniyal is an Indian entrepreneur based in Germany. He is founder of “Indian Friends of Israel”, an initiative of Indian Diaspora in Europe to promote friendship between India and Israel. The article reflects the personal view of the author. He tweets @iUniyal.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/vijeta-uniyal/the-punching-bag-bigots-of-anti-israel-boycotts/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Ayatollahs’ Secret Arms Deal with Iraq



by Majid Rafizadeh



iran_2677161b

The Obama administration, which is pushing for a final nuclear arrangement with the Islamic Republic of Iran and an easing of sanctions, has repeatedly told the American people to trust the Iranian government and that Iran is a rational state actor. Billions of dollars have already flowed into the Ayatollahs’ government, sanctions on some trade sections have been lifted, Iran’s currency (Rial) is regaining its value, Tehran’s non-oil exports are on the rise as it is starting to feel the benefits of easing international sanctions, and Iran has increased its oil exports and production. 

According to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Customs Office, Iran hit a record high in exports with $37.36 billions’ worth of non-oil products exported during the course of the past eleven months— from March 21, 2013 to February 20, 2014.

Iranian leaders have markedly increased their oil exports, particularly to China and India over the past few months. Iran’s oil exports increased significantly after the interim nuclear deal. According to Iran’s semi-official news agency Press TV, Iran’s oil sales picked up from 1.06 million barrels per day (bpd) to 1.32 million bpd. 

A confluence of interests brought Iranian leaders to a desperate political and economic position, and ultimately to the negotiating table for nuclear talks. The main concerns of the Ayatollahs were the economic sanctions and high inflation that endangered the hold on power of the ruling Iranian clerics. 

The major question is: what is the Obama administration doing in response? Instead of setting any deals based on American or the international community’s terms, the Obama administration is setting the nuclear deals based on the interests of the Iranian leaders. This is being followed by a release of billions of dollars and the lifting of sanctions. 

More importantly, how have the Iranian leaders responded to these kind offers?  These economic and political moves have emboldened and strengthened the geopolitical and economic status of the Ayatollahs. 

A few weeks ago, in a secret arms deal, the Islamic Republic and the Iraqi Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Maliki signed an arms deal worth millions of dollars. The deal was recently revealed by Reuters news agency.  Based on the recent report by Reuters, Tehran has signed a $195 million arms deal with the central Iraqi government. Accordingly, Iranian and Iraqi defense officials have signed eight agreements through which Iran will sell Baghdad arms, military communications equipment, ammunition for tanks artillery, mortars, and ammunition for U.S.-made M-12 assault rifles, among other weaponry.

First of all, it is worth noting that this arms deal is in violation of the United Nations embargo on weapons sales by Iran. But the Obama administration has not seriously reacted about this arms deal and is still continuing the nuclear talks to reach a final nuclear deal and remove all economic and political sanctions against Iran. 

This arms deal is considered to be the first official arms agreement between the Shi’ite Iranian government and Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government of Maliki. This also shows the increasing military, geopolitical, strategic and economic relationship between Iran and Iraq since American troops withdrew from Iraq in December 2011, and since the United States started to lift sanctions on the Islamic Republic. 

After the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and after the sanctions reliefs, the Islamic Republic of Iran became the most influential foreign force in Iraq politically, economically, and militarily. Based on recent developments, Iran’s socio-political and socio-economic leverage and influence in post-Baathist and post-Saddam Iraq appears to be at its peak. 

Economically speaking, the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran (TPOI) pointed out that 72% of Iran’s exports in 2013 went to Iraq. The report also revealed Iraq’s imported goods from Tehran have increased by approximately 15% last year. 

During a six-month period in 2013, Iran exported $2.868 billion worth of good to Iraq, from Iran’s total exports of $17.972 billion (of non-oil commodities, including gas condensates). Considering non-oil goods, Iraq is now Iran’s second largest trade partner—only after China. Last week, Iraqi leaders pointed out that they are working with their counterparts in Tehran to boost oil exports in an attempt to triple oil production in Iraq to 9 million bpd by 2020. Iraq’s ambassador to Iran, Mohamed Majed Abas Al-Sheikh, recently announced that Baghdad has signed an arms agreement with its eastern neighbor, Iran, to purchase weapons and military equipment as part of a broader plan to boost Iraqi defense systems and armed forces.

Last week, after the sanction relief and the nuclear interim deal, reports revealed that the Islamic Republic of Iran stepped up its military support on the ground for the Syrian regime and President Bashar al-Assad. They are further providing elite teams and necessary equipment to gather intelligence and train Syrian governmental troops. Russia, alongside the Islamic Republic, is also stepping up its arms and ammunition deliveries to Assad to assist him in regaining power.

Assad’s regime is now benefiting economically, intelligence-wise, militarily and politically from Iran’s economic recovery and from its senior commanders in Iran’s Revolutionary Gaurds Corps (IRGC), Iran’s semi-militia groups of Basij and the elite Quds Force, which is considered to be the secretive and external arm of the robust IRGC.

The more the Obama administration eases economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic, sending billions of dollars to the Ayatollahs and appeasing the Iranian regime, the more the Islamic Republic is emboldened, empowered, and strengthened to pursue its Islamist and regional hegemonic ambition. This will cause tremendous geopolitical, security, and economic backlash on the United States and other regional states such as Israel on a short and long term basis. 


Majid Rafizadeh

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/the-ayatollahs-secret-arms-deal-with-iraq/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

A Double Standard on Muslim and Jewish Massacres



by Daniel Greenfield


Hebron_massacre_newspaper

Writing about the Baruch Goldstein killings, David Wilder makes a very important point.
When journalists ask me about our reaction to Baruch Goldstein, after replying, I inquire as to whether they ask my Arab neighbors what they think about Yahya Ayyash. About 99% of them don’t know who I’m talking about. Ayyash was nicknamed ‘the engineer.’ Bombs he assembled killed more than 70 Israelis in numerous terror attacks in the 1990s. He trained his successors to follow in his footsteps after his death at the hands of Israeli intelligence. At his funeral, attended by well over 100,000 people, Arafat called him a saint. (Two days after Goldstein’s attack, Yitzhak Rabin, in the Knesset, said, “I am ashamed to be a Jew.”)
How many Jews have committed such acts? Five, six, maybe seven. How many Arabs? Between 1989 and 2008, more than 800 Arab suicide-homicide killers have murdered Jews. Who is the only one remembered? Baruch Goldstein.
The Palestinian Authority pays salaries to its mass murderers while in prison and demands their release.

John Kerry pressures Israel to free mass murderers. The New York Times and the Washington Post and the other papers doing yet more stories about Baruch Goldstein agree. It’s impossible to escape the conclusion that they don’t oppose killing people when the people being killed are Jews. Not everyone’s life is valued the same.

Here’s a murderer whom Abbas, the man that Obama declares is Israel’s peace partner, talking proudly about his crime.
Issa Abd Rabbo is one of the terrorist murderers that Israel was forced to release from prison in order for PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to agree to start negotiations with Israel. Palestinian Media Watch reported that the day Abd Rabbo was released, Mahmoud Abbas called him a “hero” and raised his hand victoriously.
Until his release, Issa Abd Rabbo was serving two life sentences for killing two Israeli university students, Ron Levi and Revital Seri, who were hiking south of Jerusalem on Oct. 22, 1984. At gun point he tied them up, put bags over their heads and then shot and murdered both.
I tied them up of course and then sentenced them to death by shooting, in the name of the revolution. I shot them, one bullet each, and went [hiding] in the mountains… I went to my aunt and told her: ‘We have avenged Muhammad’s blood.’”
Host: “She is the mother of Martyr Muhammad Abd Rabbo.”
Issa Abd Rabbo: “I told her: ‘Instead of one, we got two.’
She cried out in joy.”
The same media that will once again cover Baruch Goldstein won’t talk about the Palestinian Authority’s veneration of terrorists. That double standard and the excuses that accompany it are morally unjustifiable because excuses go both ways.
I knew Goldstein. He was my friend. He was also a doctor. A very good one. He treated both Arabs and Jews. His trauma treatment was legendary in Israeli medical circles. His on-the-spot diagnoses were, after weeks of hospital tests, found to be 100% on the mark.
He was also the only on-duty doctor in Kiryat Arba, just about 24 hours a day, seven days a week. During the first intifada, following drive-by shootings and terror attacks, he was frequently the first medical person at the scene. As such, he witnessed horrible sights. It is said that he would sleep at night with earphones in his ears, allowing him to hear reports of attacks, without disturbing his wife’s’ sleep.
Why did he do what he did? This is a question to which, as far as I know, nobody really knows the full answer. To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t leave behind any notes or messages. However, only two months earlier, I was present at the scene of the murder of his close friend, Mordechai Lapid and his son Shalom, just outside the gates of Kiryat Arba. He tried to save Mordechai’s life, in vain.
At the beginning of that fateful week, IDF General Shaul Mofaz visited with the Kiryat Arba leadership for an emergency meeting. Baruch Goldstein, as the doctor of the area, was present. Mofaz told of intelligence information concerning a planned terror attack in the area of Machpela towards the end of the week. Baruch Goldstein was asked to “be prepared.” The Saturday night prior to the attack, during evening prayers, Arabs inside Machpela chanted “Itbach el-Yahud,” “Slaughter the Jews.”
The next morning he arrived there early, shot and killed twenty nine Arabs as they prayed, wounding dozens of others.
No Israeli government has defended what Baruch Goldstein did. The same can’t be said for the Palestinian Authority.

If Israelis are expected to value the sanctity of Muslim life, there should be a reciprocal commitment on the other side, and if there isn’t such a commitment, then at the very least there should be a refraining from the celebration of mass murderers. Without that, there is no moral sanction against killing, only the sort of killing that the New York Times and the Washington Post disapprove of.

There is one side that unleashed this violence and continues unleashing it.

The media spends a great deal of time talking about the “Hebron Massacre even as it ignores the original Hebron Massacre, carried out not by one man, but by a community.
By the time the massacre ended, 67 Jews lay dead – their homes and synagogues destroyed – and the few hundred survivors were relocated to Jerusalem. The aftermath left Hebron barren of Jews for the first time in hundreds of years.
Arab youths began the riots by hurling rocks at the yeshiva students as they walked by. That afternoon, student Shmuel Rosenholtz went to the yeshiva alone. Arab rioters broke in to the building and killed him.  Rosenholtz’s was but the first of dozens of murders.
As early as 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning – the Jewish Sabbath – Arabs began to gather en masse around the Jewish community. They came in mobs, armed with clubs, knives and axes. While the women and children threw stones, the men ransacked Jewish houses and destroyed Jewish property. With only a single police officer in all of Hebron, the Arabs were able to enter Jewish courtyards with literally no opposition.
The Beit Romano police station turned into a shelter for the Jews on the morning of Saturday, August 24. It also became a synagogue when the Orthodox Jews gathered there said their morning prayers. As they finished praying, they began to hear noises outside the building. Thousands of Arabs descended from Har Hebron, shouting “Kill the Jews!” in Arabic. They even tried to break down the doors of the station.
For three days, the Jews were besieged in Beit Romano by the rampaging Arabs. Each night, ten men were allowed to leave the building and go to Hebron’s ancient Jewish cemetery to conduct a funeral for any Jews murdered that day.
I’ll close with one final quote,
One little old woman had jumped out of the auto and started to run about silently among the crowd searching and whispering, “My children, have you seen my children?”
Until that woman’s suffering gets equal billing with the complaints of Muslims, any further belaboring of Baruch Goldstein’s actions should be ignored and dismissed out of hand.
Until Muslims are held to the same standard as their victims, in Israel, in Egypt, in Pakistan, in Kashmir and in Burma, there is no justification for talking about Muslim suffering.


Daniel Greenfield

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/a-double-standard-on-muslim-and-jewish-massacres/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Taqiyya and the British Courts



by Paul Austin Murphy


Some American Thinker readers may be aware that at the end of December (2013) Tim Burton, a host for Liberty Great Britain (GB) radio was charged by West Midlands Police (England) with "racially aggravated harassment." Mr. Burton's "hate crime" was a post on Twitter which described Fiyaz Mughal (who runs an "anti-Islamophobia" website/organisation called Tell MAMA) as a "mendacious grievance-mongering taqiyya-artist."

As a result of all this, Burton was supposed to have stood trial on the 18th February 2014 at Birmingham Magistrates' Court. However, that court appearance has been postponed for seven weeks. Apparently, according to the court itself, that postponement has occurred in the interests of justice and the complexity of the case. This is partly because Tim Burton and his defense have been allowed time to arrange that certain expert witnesses appear during the hearing.

The latest twist in this tale, believe it or not, is that there's a newish (29th January) Tell Mama article on, of all things, taqiyya. That article tells us why the word is "misused" by "bigots", "Islamophobes" and "haters". That is, it tells us how all the critics of Islam misuse the word. In fact I'm surprise[d] Fiyaz Mughal didn't use the phrase "myths about taqiyya"; as in the omnipresent phrase "myths about jihad".

Predictably, Tell Mama, or Fiyaz Mughal, is applying taqiyya to taqiyya. Or, to be pompous for a moment, he's using meta-taqiyya.

The prime example of (Sunni) taqiyya about taqiyya is that it's a "Shia phenomenon". And, lo and behold, this Tell Mama article is all about how Shia Muslims used taqiyya to stop their persecution... by Sunni Muslims! Yes, historically, that persecution was usually carried out by Sunni Muslims; a fact which this article conveniently misses out.

To sum this up: Sunni Muslims conquered and then ruled up to a third of the world for many centuries and therefore had no pressing need to employ taqiyya. Shia Muslims, on the other hand, did have such a need.

A Perfect Example of Taqiyya

My favourite example of taqiyya occurred when Mohammed Ayoub (a founder of the Muslim youth magazine The Revival) was being interviewed alongside Tommy Robinson by Catrin Nye for the BBC Asian Network. In this interview Tommy Robinson stated that shariah law was "barbaric". He then asked Mohammad Ayoub the following question: "Do women get put in a hole and stoned?" To which Ayoub replied: "That practice was stopped in the 7th century." (You will see this BBC interview being discussed in this edition of The Revival. And guess what. Sharia stoning is never once mentioned!)

There were no second thoughts on Ayoub's part. The lie came easy to him because lying is actually part of Islam. (The lie can be seen in this video at 2 minutes and 45 seconds.) In other words, Mohammed Ayoub most definitely knew he was lying. There have been tens of thousands of Islamic stonings since the 7th century. There have been hundreds of Islamic stonings, and worse, in the last twenty years. Somewhere in the Islamic world today there will probably be an Islamic stoning. How do I know that? Because there was a stoning in Iran just the other day.

Despite all that, the strength of Mohammed Ayoub's commitment to Islamic taqiyya must have led him to disregard the large video and photographic evidence of Islamic stonings which can be found on YouTube and elsewhere; as well as all the evidence in history books and other forms of documentation. Yet, none of that mattered to this particular Muslim.

The lie didn't matter at that precise moment because Mohammed Ayoub knew that the presenter was ignorant (which she was) of Islam and sharia law and that most non-Muslim viewers would also have been ignorant. That was all that mattered to Ayoub at the time. And that was all that was needed to win -- or so Ayoub thought -- that particular television battle against the non-Muslims.

Indeed Fiyaz Mughal will be hoping that this kind of thing will happen again during his court appearance with Tim Burton. He will be hoping that the jury, judge and viewers will all be ignorant of Islam/taqiyya and also sympathetic to his cause. What non-Muslims discover after the court case will simply be irrelevant to him.

Taqiyya and Ordinary Lying

Fiyaz Mughal seems to think that us "bigots" and "haters" think that "Muslims sit around talking about taqiyya whilst eating their family size KFC chicken buckets". Muslims don't need to because taqiyya is actually built into both the Koran and Islam generally. Even Allah called himself "the greatest deceiver" in the Koran. There are also many other references to Mohammed's own deceit. Muslims, on the whole, simply take it for granted that Muslims are allowed to lie in order to protect and advance Islam.

Mughal tries to make out that all critics of Islam are using the word "taqiyya" indiscriminately and that they also claim that all Muslims lie about everything. He says:
"Furthermore, imagine saying this about any other faith -- that a whole group of people are potential liars and are religiously sanctioned to lie so that they can gain positions of power."
No. Fiyaz Mughal is deliberately lying about what people are saying about taqiyya. No one is saying that all Muslims are compulsive liars on all subjects. We aren't saying that Muslim lie about, say, financial accounts or voting procedures. We are saying, specifically, that Muslims use taqiyya to protect and advance Islam/Muslims within a non-Muslim country.

Fiyaz Mughal also tells us that all the critics of Islam overuse the word "taqiyya". He says that all us "haters" repeat that word as if it's a "stuck record". Is that like the words "Islamophobe", "racist" and "fascist" which Muslims and their Leftist friends repeatedly use as a basic substitute for thought and debate? Or what about words like "haters" and "bigot" which Mughal himself continually uses in this very article? What about that "stuck record", Mr. Ughal?

In a similar vein, Mughal says that the "Far Right" (I forgot about that one!) indulges in the "caricaturing of a group of people [Muslims]." Is that anything like "caricaturing" all the critics of Islam or every single supporter of all the counter-jihad movements? Or is it a completely different -- and far more politically correct -- kind of caricaturing?

There's more of this self-referential stuff from Tell Mama. Here we encounter those "bigots" again. Apparently, critics of Islam "like nothing better than to live in a fantasy world in which they thrive on fear and insecurity." Is that like the "fantasy world" of Tell Mama's bogus Islamophobia epidemic? And is that also like the pretend Muslim "fear and insecurity" that supplies Fiyaz Mughal with a large income and a means to advance Islam?

Tell Mama on Shia Taqiyya

Let's get down to Tell Mama's application of taqiyya to taqiyya. Firstly we are told this:
"Wikipedia gives a fairly accurate description of the term which was developed because of Shia persecution and it provided dispensation to those Shias who were under the real threat of death and only in those circumstances."

Here Tell Mama is lying and dissimulating about Islamic lying and dissimulation. And the classic trope from Sunnis Muslims is that taqiyya is a "Shia phenomenon." It's not: as a large amount of evidence clearly shows. (For a brief introduction to Sunni taqiyya, see
this article.)

Fiyaz Mughal even uses a bit of taqiyya about the Wikipedia article he quotes. Yes, that article does mention the Shia use of taqiyya. Nonetheless, it's hardly the case that the entire entry is devoted to how only Shia Muslims used taqiyya. And Mughal also forgets to mention that it was usually Sunni Muslims who were persecuting or oppressing Shia Muslims. Yes, he's talking about when Shia Muslims were persecuted by Sunni Muslims, as they still are all over the Sunni Muslim world still today: from Pakistan all the way to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Finally, Tell Mama shouldn't confuse being critical of Islam with being ignorant of Islam. In fact what is usually the case is that Leftist Islamophiles are the ones who are truly ignorant of Islam. So ignorant that they see all expressions of Islam -- from the militant to the everyday -- as simple expressions of "poverty", "foreign intervention" and "oppression". Islam, to Leftists, is a mere "epiphenomenon of [bad] socioeconomic material conditions" and other political realities. So do Mughal's Leftist friends really have a better understanding of Islam, and taqiyya, than the critics of Islam?


Paul Austin Murphy

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/taqiyya_and_the_british_courts.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Britain: Islamists Create Climate of Fear to Curb Free Speech



by Soeren Kern

"My intention was to carve out a space to be heard without constantly fearing the blasphemy charge, on pain of death." — Maajid Nawaz, Liberal Democratic Party candidate for Britain's Parliament.
"The media's vaunted concern for minority welfare is at direct odds with its indifference to the minority within Islam that is trying to reform its orthodoxy's disgraceful attitude to blasphemy—a minority that is gravely endangered and in need of friends." — Abhishek Phadnis, free speech activist, London School of Economics.

Muslim fundamentalists in London have threatened to behead a fellow British Muslim after he posted an innocuous image of Mohammed and Jesus on his Twitter account.

The death threats against Maajid Nawaz, a Liberal Democrat Party candidate for British Parliament, add to a growing number of cases in which Islamists are using intimidation tactics to restrict the free speech rights of fellow Muslims in Europe. (Efforts to silence non-Muslims are well documented.)

Nawaz—a former member of the Islamist revolutionary group Hizb ut-Tahrir and co-founder of the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based counter-extremism think-tank—on January 12 posted on Twitter a cartoon of Mohammed and Jesus greeting one another ("Hey" and "How ya doin'?") with the caption: "This Jesus & Mo @JandMo cartoon is not offensive&I'm sure God is greater than to feel threatened by it الله أكبر منه".

Nawaz's tweet followed a BBC Big Questions program in which the "Jesus and Mo" cartoons, which have been around since 2005, were discussed and Nawaz was included as a studio guest.

Nawaz, who is also author of the book "Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism," said he posted the image to trigger a debate among Muslims about what should and should not be acceptable within Islam.

Not in the mood for debate, furious Muslims responded by bullying and issuing threats of violence—including beheading—and also launched a petition (it quickly garnered more than 20,000 signatures) to have Nawaz deselected as a candidate for parliament.

Labour Party Councilor Yaqub Hanif of Luton, a town situated 50 km (30 miles) north of London and known as the Islamic extremist capital of Britain, said the depictions of Mohammed were "totally unacceptable" to Muslims and called on Nawaz to step down.

"It's appalling that this guy is a parliamentary candidate because this behavior is not conducive to being an MP," Hanif said in an interview with the International Business Times. "If you want to be an MP then you must respect all faiths. He's not doing that."

A counter-petition has now been set up (it has only 8,000 signatures) calling on the Liberal Democrats to give Nawaz their full support. The petition states:

"Islamists and political opponents have mounted a campaign against Maajid Nawaz, resulting in numerous threats to his life. We note that this campaign, rather than being based on legitimate concerns of Muslims, is a political campaign which is being spear-headed by a group of Muslim reactionaries with a track record of promoting extremism. They are seeking to use Muslim communities in order to whip up hatred against a liberal and secular Muslims. We are concerned that this campaign will also be used by anti-Muslim extremists as evidence of Muslim intolerance and incompatibility with liberal values which could, in turn, fuel anti-Muslim bigotry."

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, has expressed his support for Nawaz. "We simply cannot tolerate anyone in a free country—where we have to protect free speech, even if that free speech might cause offense to others—being subject to death threats and them and their family being put under extraordinary pressure to recant what they said," Clegg said.

Muslims eventually retaliated by rescinding the Quilliam Foundation's nomination for the annual British Muslim Awards, held in Manchester on January 30. Quilliam had been listed in the "Spirit of Britain" award category, but a statement on the awards' Facebook page reads: "In light of recent activity, the British Muslim Awards, after careful consideration, have come to the decision that it can no longer promote the Quilliam Foundation as a finalist, and thus its nomination has been removed with immediate effect."

More worrisome for the principle of free speech is that British mainstream media have censored reporting of the Jesus & Mo cartoon controversy.

For example, Channel 4 News blacked out a cartoon image of the Prophet Mohammed during a news broadcast on January 28 in order not to cause offense to Muslim viewers. In an open letter to the editor of Channel 4, the National Secular Society wrote that by "making this decision you have effectively taken a side in a debate where a Muslim man has suffered violent death threats after he explicitly said he did not find the cartoons offensive. You have taken the side of the reactionaries—the side of people who bully and violently threaten Muslims, such as Mr. Nawaz, online."

"By redacting the picture of 'Mo,' you have contributed to a climate of censorship brought on by the unreasonable and reactionary views of some religious extremists. Rather than defending free expression, one of the most precious pillars of our liberal democratic society, you have chosen instead to listen to extremists and patronize British Muslims by assuming they will take offense at an irreverent and satirical cartoon. By taking the decision you did, not only did you betray the fundamental journalistic principle of free speech, but you have become complicit in a trend that seeks to insidiously stereotype all Muslim people as reacting in one uniform way (generally presented as overly sensitive and potentially violent)."


Channel 4 News blacked out a cartoon image of the Prophet Mohammed during a news broadcast on January 28.


In an article entitled, "Why I'm speaking up for Islam against the loudmouths who have hijacked it" (published by The Guardian newspaper on January 28), Nawaz defended his decision to tweet the image of Jesus and Mo.

"My intention was to carve out a space to be heard without constantly fearing the blasphemy charge, on pain of death," Nawaz wrote. "Modern Islamist attempts to impose theocratic orthodoxy on us will be resisted."

Others are not so sure. In an essay entitled, "Publish and be Damned," Abhishek Phadnis, a free speech activist at the London School of Economics, writes:

"The media's vaunted concern for minority welfare is at odds with its indifference to the minority within Islam that is trying to reform its orthodoxy's disgraceful attitude to blasphemy—a minority that is gravely endangered and in need of friends. Theirs is a spirited rear-guard against a gigantic global power of untold wealth and influence (namely Islamism, or the "loudmouths who have hijacked" Islam, as Maajid Nawaz puts it) which has a wretched record on freedom of expression, and every intention of exporting it."
"Since 1988, it has suborned the murder of foreign cartoonists, translators, artists, publishers and filmmakers who have offended its sensibilities, and has blighted the life and career of our most gifted contemporary novelist [Salman Rushdie]. Its blasphemy code has been visited upon Western universities, publishers, magazines, museums, art galleries, television productions, operas, independent cartoonists, artists and filmmakers and even Wikipedia, and it has sought to sabotage the economies and wreck the diplomatic missions of democracies that refuse to implement that code."

"It is a damning indictment of the press's confusion that every publication has ended up on the wrong side of its own politics in this matter," Phadnis concludes.


Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4197/britain-islamists-free-speech

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.